{"id":56766,"date":"2020-02-20T05:53:55","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T09:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?p=56766"},"modified":"2020-02-10T18:56:40","modified_gmt":"2020-02-10T22:56:40","slug":"sex-outrage-and-american-religion-miss-americas-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2020\/02\/sex-outrage-and-american-religion-miss-americas-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Sex, Outrage, and American Religion: Miss America’s God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Super Bowl halftime show sparked outrage among a contingent of American Christians. Although the halftime show is rarely considered a purveyor of American moral values, this year\u2019s performance by Shakira and Jennifer Lopez provoked new levels of opposition. James Dobson denounced<\/a> the \u201csexual smorgasbord\u201d on display and rejected any cultural lens\u2014\u201cpole dancing, sex simulation and crotch shots are not a celebration of Latino culture,\u201d he insisted. \u201cThey are a celebration of our hypersexualized culture.\u201d Whether or not women chose to participate, objectifying women in this way was wrong. Franklin Graham lamented<\/a> the disappearance of moral decency on prime time television, and drew a link between the sexual exploitation of women worldwide and the halftime show\u2019s purported demonstration \u201cthat sexual exploitation of women is okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conservative Christians, however, have a more ambivalent relationship to the objectification of women that this current moment of outrage would suggest. In her new book Miss America\u2019s God: Faith and Identity in America\u2019s Oldest Pageant<\/em><\/a>, Mandy McMichael presents a story of selective outrage, occasional ambivalence, and ultimate emb\"\"<\/a>race of women\u2019s sexualized public display of female beauty in the Miss America pageant.<\/p>\n

McMichael traces how religious opposition to the pageant in its early year shut the competition down entirely from 1928 to 1932 and 1934. But in 1935, pageant organizers hired Lenora Slaughter, a Southern Baptist woman, to enhance the pageant\u2019s respectability. Slaughter achieved remarkable success.<\/p>\n

This success was due in part to strategic changes implemented within the pageant itself. Contestants were presented as ideal future wives and mothers, reinforcing male control of sexuality. Rather than something scandalous, \u201csex masqueraded as talent, character, scholarship, and other criteria suitable to those of refined tastes.\u201d Somewhat paradoxically, this sanitized sexuality also came to carry a religious significance.<\/p>\n

With the onset of the Cold War, religion gained an increasing presence in the American public. The pageant became a place where the country could celebrate its young women\u2014women who modeled the best of America, who (again, somewhat paradoxically) served as society\u2019s moral guardians. The rise of feminism, too, elevated the significance of female beauty for conservatives who rejected the liberation from femininity that the women\u2019s movement embraced. Beauty pageants affirmed \u201ctraditional femininity\u201d while promising women opportunities for advancement that reinforced rather than undermined patriarchy.<\/p>\n

In 1965, Vonda Van Dyke (Miss Arizona, a Methodist) was the first to speak about her faith publicly. At the time, contestants had to agree not to talk about their faith, but when the emcee asked her about her Bible, she took the opportunity to talk about \u201cthe most important book I own.\u201d In light of the overwhelmingly positive response, officials changed the rules to allow for such statements, opening the way for a string of Miss America contestants eager to speak of their faith. Memorable examples include Pentecostal<\/a> Cheryl Prewitt (Mississippi), who talked of God\u2019s healing power that had set her on her way to winning the national pageant in 1980. In 1995, Miss Alabama Heather Whitestone, a Baptist and hearing-impaired contestant, won the national competition by dancing to Sandi Patti\u2019s \u201cVia Dolorosa.\u201d The next year, Shawntel Smith was also outspoken about her Pentecostal faith. Indeed, more than half of the pageant\u2019s winners after 1965 professed Christianity publicly, which they saw as entirely compatible with stripping down to their swimsuits on national television.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most memorably, Carrie Prejean, Miss California USA and first runner-up to Miss USA 2009, declared her preference for marriage being restricted to that between a man and a woman (\u201cno offense to anybody out there\u201d). This assertion prompted Dobson to praise Prejean for \u201cpreaching a sermon with her life,\u201d and her pastor to compare her to Esther. Prejean became a lightning rod for attack not just for this response, but also because of her breast enhancement surgery, the existence of compromising photographs, and rumors (eventually confirmed) of a sex tape.<\/p>\n

Still, conservative Christians continued to support the sexualized yet (in most cases) sanitized femininity, a femininity that had become linked to anti-feminism\u2014and to Christian nationalism. In all their beauty and (hetero)sexual allure, they symbolized the height of American womanhood. By modeling an idealized femininity, they could serve as moral exemplars for the nation. To be sure, this is an equation riddled with tension.<\/p>\n

What, then, did conservative Christians find so objectionable about the hypersexualized halftime show? The pole dancing and crotch grabbing undeniably suggested the abandonment of the carefully crafted patriarchal restraint that characterized the sexuality of the Miss America pageant. Moreover, Dobson\u2019s protestations aside, cultural factors undoubtedly played a role as well\u2014not just in terms of Latino music and dance, but also, and perhaps more powerfully, in terms of the rejection of white Christian nationalism that Shakira\u2019s and Lopez\u2019s performances communicated. From Lopez\u2019s unfurling of a feathered Puerto Rican flag to the accompaniment of Bruce Springsteen\u2019s \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.,\u201d to the appearance of children in cage-like structures, the halftime show presented female sexuality as a weapon that could be wielded against the ideal of \u201cChristian America,\u201d rather than in service to it.<\/p>\n

And that, surely, is sufficient to provoke outrage.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 This year\u2019s Super Bowl halftime show sparked outrage among a contingent of American Christians. Although the halftime show is rarely considered a purveyor of American moral values, this year\u2019s performance by Shakira and Jennifer Lopez provoked new levels of opposition. James Dobson denounced the \u201csexual smorgasbord\u201d on display and rejected any cultural lens\u2014\u201cpole dancing, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2797,"featured_media":56778,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,1,2625],"tags":[3684,6399,6390,6393,6387,6396,1390],"class_list":["post-56766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sexuality","category-uncategorized","category-women","tag-beauty","tag-halftime-show","tag-j-lo","tag-jennifer-lopez","tag-miss-america","tag-shakira","tag-super-bowl"],"yoast_head":"\nSex, Outrage, and American Religion: Miss America's God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The halftime show presented female sexuality as a weapon that could be wielded against the ideal of \u201cChristian America,\u201d rather than in service to it.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, 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